GDC07 - Raphing It Up #1

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GDC07 - Raphing It Up #1

You read that right - we did actually sit down with Raph at GDC this year. Belatedly, we bring you the first in a short series of articles, consisting of transcripts from the marathon interview conducted at the very beginning of the conference.

As is becoming standard with our designer interviews, we're roaming all over the landscape in terms of topics. In this installment, we touch on Areae, team sizes, Chief Creative Officers, game grammars, the play preferences of children and the fun of flapping, among many other things.

Enjoy!

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[Raph]

"Andean Bird."

The version shown at GDC is up here: http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/03/09/gdc-07-jon-blows-nuances-of-design-session/

[Yoru]

"Andean Bird."

The version shown at GDC is up here: http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/03/09/gdc-07-jon-blows-nuances-of-design-session/

Fixed, thanks. :)

[Raph]

Nobody likes our interview, Yoru! 

[schild]

SOE/Sigil stole your thunder. Apologies.

Irony++?

Edit: I make it a point not to have other site content when interviews and such go up, but this particular set of news posts couldn't exactly wait if you know what I'm saying.

[Raph]

Oh, I understand. :)

[Yoru]

Nobody likes our interview, Yoru! 

Don't worry, next time we'll just go get some Amy's Ice Cream instead. ;)

SOE/Sigil stole your thunder. Apologies.

Irony++?

Edit: I make it a point not to have other site content when interviews and such go up, but this particular set of news posts couldn't exactly wait if you know what I'm saying.

And this is why I'm probably going to hold the next installment until later this week; gotta let the Sigil thing blow over and get back to Slow News Time.

[tazelbain]

Feel free to reveal details of what your company is actually doing.  I bet you'll get the thunder back then.

[Sky]

Picturing the UO skunkworks was a nice memory. I always liked the story of how that came together, it helps explain goddamned U9 (ie: the only Ultima I didn't like). You should join other UO vets on  ;)

Or at least announce you're using a Planetside 2.0 engine for your sandboxy world-build. Dude...4WD + guns, mechanics as crafters. C'mon. Sorry, you know I feel compulsed to say this stuff by now. But I'll bring it around to your zen gaming thing...In Planetside, sometimes I just like driving around on a buggy. I roleplay that I'm 15 again, riding around on the trails behind my parent's house...but there are tanks shooting at me. I used to play 'Crazy Taxi' in BF1942. Pull up with a jeep, honk the horn, guys pile in ("Jump in!") and then I'd drive them to the front line and yell "Bail out!". To me, the game is cool, but the mechanics of vehicles and interesting gameplay elements like that allow freedom to do much more fun things at the fringes of everyone who is actually playing the game 'as intended'.

Don't know if you remember back on LtM when you first announced you were working for SOE, before SWG was announced iirc, I said I hoped you made enough money (and fame) to make the game you really wanted to make (this was just after UO, remember), /after/ the SOE gig. You replied that you hoped you /were/ making that game, at SOE. I love your idealism, man, I seriously do.

So...now make that game. We're still here waiting! :)

The bit about board games was cool. My singer and I were art majors together (our band started as an art project, making album covers!) and we used to make tons of our own board games, back in the day of your Gangsters or Star Frontiers with tons of little cardboard counters. We had a class project (same year as the album covers, both our ideas) for a board game. Everyone made like Sorry or some weak Monopoly rip. We made an Indiana Jones adventure where you had encounter tables around the game map, you'd roll to see if pirhana attacked when you crossed a river, you'd have combat tables for fighting the 'zulu'. You could choose from several weapons (whip, pistol, spear, maybe more) and take weapons from other players/npcs. The other kids hated us.

[damijin]

Feel free to reveal details of what your company is actually doing.  I bet you'll get the thunder back then.

qft

[Sir Fodder]

I'm wondering about the anxiety expressed over the mechanistic notion of game as nothing more than math, or a clockwork. A sort of thought progression from fun as pattern learning, to realizing those patterns are mathematical, to game grammar/notation, to the anxiety part seems to be described. I'm not sure what the anxiety is about; Other artforms are governed by and/or describable by math, (music is an easy example). I know of musical scores that were contrived based purely upon mathematical principles, that when played can elicit extraordinary emotional responses. Maybe the issue is that our current computer languages, and the machines that process them are too simple of a clockwork to either spoof or more accurately represent more subtle and rich structures and dynamics? Quantization may not be an issue if the gradations are more fine than our perceptual abilities. If a gray wash is indistinguishable from a greyscale, they are the same thing to the observer.

[Raph]

Feel free to reveal details of what your company is actually doing.  I bet you'll get the thunder back then.

qft

6-8 weeks from now.

[Raph]

I'm wondering about the anxiety expressed over the mechanistic notion of game as nothing more than math, or a clockwork. A sort of thought progression from fun as pattern learning, to realizing those patterns are mathematical, to game grammar/notation, to the anxiety part seems to be described. I'm not sure what the anxiety is about; Other artforms are governed by and/or describable by math, (music is an easy example). I know of musical scores that were contrived based purely upon mathematical principles, that when played can elicit extraordinary emotional responses. Maybe the issue is that our current computer languages, and the machines that process them are too simple of a clockwork to either spoof or more accurately represent more subtle and rich structures and dynamics? Quantization may not be an issue if the gradations are more fine than our perceptual abilities. If a gray wash is indistinguishable from a greyscale, they are the same thing to the observer.

I suppose the best explanation I can offer is to point to this talk I gave last year:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/10/project-horseshoe-influences/

[Furiously]

Werewolf looks like a fun party game. Thanks for the link to it.

[Xanthippe]

I read the interview and felt frustration that Raph couldn't talk more about his project.  I went to his homepage and downloaded his game and played it.  Then I downloaded The Marriage and played that (I'm with the guy's wife - I hate the rules too).

Interesting as they are, I want to clicky clicky punch buttons too much for these games, I think.  I want my actions to do more - there's nothing subtle about me, and I suck at games where subtlety is required.

I did like the little floaty things and the music.  But I wanted to steeply divebomb my bird into the ocean or the island and smash it.

[Furiously]

You want to make your seagull game fun?

Low brow it...

Let me poop on stuff. Bonus points if you can find cars their owners just finished washing.

*More bonus points if people shake their fist at me when I poop on them or something they own.
You also want to make sure you get a couple different "splat noises".

[Murgos]

He's right.  Also, killing something in as graphical a manner as possible wouldn't hurt either.  You could tie them both together, once you've killed and eaten something then you can poop on something else.

I smell a WoW buster.

[Furiously]

Ohh - yea - maybe make it a hawk and you can dive for kittens, bunnies, field mice, frogs and graphically tear them to pieces, while pooping on stuff. If you want to make it game of the year though... add human babies to the list of prey.

The pooping on stuff is key though.

[Yoru]

Ohh - yea - maybe make it a hawk and you can dive for kittens, bunnies, field mice, frogs and graphically tear them to pieces, while pooping on stuff. If you want to make it game of the year though... add human babies to the list of prey.

The pooping on stuff is key though.

... Pigeon of War?

[tazelbain]

With Boss battles:  Kid with a BB gun, a hoard of cats, a windmill, etc.

[Furiously]

What's funnier - pooping on the hood or the windshield?

[Murgos]

What's funnier - pooping on the hood or the windshield?

It's situational.  Is someone driving the car at 80 down the highway?  Or was it just buffed and polished?

[Xanthippe]

You idiots.  You realize Raph is going to steal your ideas and then become a bazillionaire from this while you'll get nothing.

[hal]

Go Ralph go. Do it. Do it soon.

[Furiously]

Hay - Raph deserves some success after SWG...

[Ryuno]

Very interesting! Nice interview :)

[Ironwood]

I'm wondering about the anxiety expressed over the mechanistic notion of game as nothing more than math, or a clockwork. A sort of thought progression from fun as pattern learning, to realizing those patterns are mathematical, to game grammar/notation, to the anxiety part seems to be described. I'm not sure what the anxiety is about; Other artforms are governed by and/or describable by math, (music is an easy example). I know of musical scores that were contrived based purely upon mathematical principles, that when played can elicit extraordinary emotional responses. Maybe the issue is that our current computer languages, and the machines that process them are too simple of a clockwork to either spoof or more accurately represent more subtle and rich structures and dynamics? Quantization may not be an issue if the gradations are more fine than our perceptual abilities. If a gray wash is indistinguishable from a greyscale, they are the same thing to the observer.

I suppose the best explanation I can offer is to point to this talk I gave last year:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/10/project-horseshoe-influences/

Oh Good God, how high were you giving that speech ?

[Raph]

I suppose the best explanation I can offer is to point to this talk I gave last year:

http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/11/10/project-horseshoe-influences/

Oh Good God, how high were you giving that speech ?

Completely sober. But somewhat sleep-deprived. And it was to an audience of equally sleep-deprived game designers. Ya know, sometimes we do talk about stuff like that when you put us all in a room together. :)

[schild]

Sorry again, Raph.

[Furiously]

So no comment on Baby Eating Defecating Eagle?

Also I was thinking about what makes the game of werewolf fun. It's not the game. It's the interaction and play between the people. Sure - the rules help bring it about. But the same can be said of Pictionary or Charades.

It's not the game that is fun. It's the play.

The problem with bringing it online is you will have one person that keeps their eyes open or shouts "THEIR THE WERWOLF!!!!!!" or does anything they can to interfere with the play. I'm starting to agree with Schild that playing with yourself might be the most fun... :P

[Ironwood]

I've always thought so.

[Raph]

So no comment on Baby Eating Defecating Eagle?

You don't actually think that was an original proposal, do you? :) It's the first, most obvious place people go... and that means there's either a) a huge pent-up demand or b) it's too obvious, and there will soon be clones, and we need to position this title away from the crush. We need different bullets on the box!

(Sorry, my sarcasm muscle is weak before my morning coffee).

[Slayerik]

Sorry again, Raph.

No matter what thunder stealing interviews came after Raph's, I'm still looking forward to the next installments of Raph's interview (s?) Hell, the reason I started lurking at the original waterthread was because I stumbled upon a long discussion with Raph involved, I think it was some HRose thread about FUN or something. Maybe UO. Probably UO cause you guys know how I roll.

Glad you have stuck around here through the years...now put that theory to work and make me something fun, I have no MMO to play at the moment. ;)

[Vinadil]

I'm wondering about the anxiety expressed over the mechanistic notion of game as nothing more than math, or a clockwork. A sort of thought progression from fun as pattern learning, to realizing those patterns are mathematical, to game grammar/notation, to the anxiety part seems to be described. I'm not sure what the anxiety is about; Other artforms are governed by and/or describable by math, (music is an easy example). I know of musical scores that were contrived based purely upon mathematical principles, that when played can elicit extraordinary emotional responses. Maybe the issue is that our current computer languages, and the machines that process them are too simple of a clockwork to either spoof or more accurately represent more subtle and rich structures and dynamics? Quantization may not be an issue if the gradations are more fine than our perceptual abilities. If a gray wash is indistinguishable from a greyscale, they are the same thing to the observer.

I was actually thinking along the same lines when I read the interview and found myself thinking, "Music is pretty much just math on paper... at least the old-school classical stuff."  I think the problem might arise when you Begin with the math and try to Create the art, rather than Beginning with the Art and then Discovering the math that already lies beneath it.  I feel safe in assuming Music predates Math.  People could design an instrument that played different notes before they could give you the mathematical relationship between those notes.

I think the same used to be said of games... people used to be able to design a good game and then sit back and Quantify the "good" and "bad" points.  Now people often just try to take a list of established "good" points and build a game around them.  It may not work so well in that direction.

[Murgos]

I think the same used to be said of games... people used to be able to design a good game and then sit back and Quantify the "good" and "bad" points.  Now people often just try to take a list of established "good" points and build a game around them.  It may not work so well in that direction.

Trial and error development probably isn't acceptable on 30 million dollar multi-hundred man year projects.